Welcome to Once Upon a Nightmare! We are a Dark/High Fantasy site that explores some familiar stories in new and exciting ways. We are currently embarking on our third year of game play. Join us with a canon or an original. With a whole host of Canon Tales and Wanted Ads to choose from as well as a Bestiary full of exciting species...we welcome you to our world and hope you decide to make it your own.

Our world has always been one born of conflict whether it was gods squabbling over their domains in the first days of time or two thousands years later when their creations the Fae tried to war against them to overthrow the Pantheon and take the world for themselves. Even after the Fae lost that war and were sentenced to live in a prison of their own making, their replacements, the Humans, were only a little more peaceful. They fought amongst themselves over land and resources or in a constant quest for power. Only one man was capable of bringing about a tenuous ceasefire some two thousand years after they were created, but even he did so with sword and blood and violence. For his efforts, Uther Pendragon was poisoned and conflict was born anew.

Peace did not come until prince who was raised a peasant pulled from the stone a sword that made him sovereign of the world of Ga’leah. Arthur Pendragon brought about the peace that many had dreamed of since the world began, but it was not to last.

The darkest times the world would ever know began with the Queen’s execution for infidelity and treachery to the crown. She did not die, but instead picked up a broken-hearted Pendragon’s mighty Excalibur and led the charge against a menace unlike anything they had ever seen. The Blight had come.

For months that followed, the residents of Ga’leah be they God, Human, Fae, or something else entirely, fought desperately to save their worlds from something that seemed determined to destroy it. Slowly, kingdoms like Dokrayth fell to the disease-like arm of the Blight, the Walking Starvation, that raised the dead and sent them hungrily shambling through the land in search of flesh. It turned the ocean water of the Maritanis black and drove the Pirates inland and the Merkind to seek shelter in the inland Sea of Lyrielle. It felled the magical woodlands of the Yarrow. The sky became black as night as the sun died, new flames would not spark when the god of fire was consumed, even the weather itself became unreliable as the storm god fell to the Blight. But, when all seemed lost, the people of Ga’leah came together against their common enemy, the evil Queen Maleficent of Xehacora was discovered as the mastermind behind the Blight and for her part in the destruction and death it had wrought, she was killed and the true king of Xehacora was restored.

In the six months that followed, the people of Ga’leah attempted to put their many differences behind them to rebuild that which had been destroyed and to mourn that which had been lost. The gods began a quest to fill the godhoods left empty by their losses, the High Court began to question who who should be placed in charge of the kingdoms when they were rebuilt, and a new entity emerged by way of Cult determined to convince the people that the only way forward was to rid the world of magic all together.

None realized that new horror was coming. The land and sea, so broken and consumed by the darkness for so long was now possessed by the spirits of those who died in torment. Ever soul once taken by the Blight or the Walking Starvation was freed of the Blight but was now something unlike anything the world had ever seen before. Everywhere the Blight touched, the spirits of those who had suffered remained. For six months, people believed the tales of moaning and screaming in the night; of objects moving on their own; of faces appearing in walls or ghostly spectres floating in the dark; of people behaving strangely and having no memory of their out of character behaviors were all nothing but the residual fear of the Blight and what they had suffered. But they were wrong.

Haunted by the pain and anger of those killed before their time, now it is a world possessed by the dead and we are just merely trying to survive in it.

The Site

Once Upon a Nightmare is a dark fantasy game that marries aspects of horror and beloved fantasy. Here the characters of popular fairy tales, myths, and fantasy stories exist with a grim and sometimes shocking twist.

Our story is one of survival in a world gone mad. Where once the High King ruled a land of utopia, now terror reigns supreme. Characters may find themselves and their tales facing all manner of major or minor conflict that could shape them in strange and exciting new ways.

Once Upon a Nightmare is approaching it's Four Year Anniversary, something about which we are extremely proud! Over the last four years we have cultivated a relaxed atmosphere filled with players how are passionate about their plots, characters, and the site itself. We have discovered, however, that we are not particularly fast paced. We like to let our characters simmer in drama and angst, drawing out dangerous situations and plotlines to full affect to allow for a maximum of character development and growth. For this reason, while we are and have always been very active, we are not a face paced game. This relaxed atmosphere has worked well for us for the last four years, and is not likely to change in the future.

We offer a wide variety of Canon Tales, each adapted to suit the atmosphere of our game. However, we also welcome the adaptation of new tales by the players, and the creation of original characters within the scope of our universe.

There are limitless possibilities for characters ranging from a completely original pantheon of gods to a player created ‘bestiary’ and beyond.

So please, take a look around our humble site where we hope you will find a home…though not a happily ever after.